RacingLando Norris used a McLaren social video to name his four all-time favorite Formula 1 drivers, and the 2025 world champion kept it close to what he watched growing up. He went with Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel, and Fernando Alonso. The list leans into McLaren heritage and, by design, leaves out contemporary rival Max Verstappen, who comes from Norris’s own generation.
Norris said he started with two Britons, Hamilton and Button, because they were the guys he supported as a kid and the McLaren drivers who inspired him. That era shaped how he saw F1. Hamilton’s rise from McLaren rookie to world champion was the story every young British karter followed. Button’s smooth style and title-winning run made him another natural pick.
He then added Vettel and Alonso as champions he grew up watching. Vettel stood out to him during the Red Bull title years for the way he went about winning and for his style on track. Those seasons were part of the TV backdrop for a teenager working his way through the junior ranks. Alonso was on Norris’s radar from the Spaniard’s early McLaren stint, and he praised both Alonso’s personality and the way he drives. That mix of speed and presence clearly made an impact.
Norris pointed to the balance in the list. It starts with two Britons and carries a clear McLaren thread. It also reflects the champions who filled his early viewing, the drivers who made him want to be on the grid rather than the ones he now fights every weekend.
Context matters here. Norris is the reigning champion after a tight 2025 fight with Oscar Piastri and Verstappen. So when he left Verstappen out, it tracked with how he framed the exercise. He was talking about heroes from his childhood, not peers from his own era. The McLaren colors are all over those memories, which explains why Hamilton and Button came first and why Alonso’s early spell with the team got a mention. Vettel slots in as the standard-bearer from the dominant Red Bull seasons Norris watched from afar.
It reads as a snapshot of what built the driver who now holds the number one plate: Hamilton and Button as the McLaren idols he cheered, Vettel as the champion whose Red Bull run impressed him, and Alonso as the racer whose personality and craft stuck with him. That is the filter Norris chose for an all-time list, and in McLaren’s clip he kept it to the stars who pulled him into the sport in the first place.